Reese Witherspoon believes in being brutally honest when it comes to mental health.The actor and producer opened up about her postpartum depression and anxiety in an intimate profile for Harper’s Bazaar UK published on Sunday, telling the magazine how those experiences taught her that you can’t “beat around the bush” when trying to untangle emotions.Witherspoon remembered things getting “really bad” after the birth of her daughter, Ava Phillippe, in 1999 and how she silently struggled for longer than she should have.“In the first six months, I was simultaneously happy and depressed,” she recalled. “I just cried all the time, I was up all night, I was exhausted. It was a hormone drop I didn’t expect, which I experienced right after birth and again when I stopped nursing six months later.”Hormones were only one part of the equation for Witherspoon, who also said she felt smothered by all the judgments young mothers face.“Everyone has an opinion,” she explained. “It’s hard being a young mom and having people tell you how to be, how to react, how to give birth, how to nurse and how to feed your baby. It’s inundating.”Reese Witherspoon, seen here at the 2024 WSJ Magazines Innovator Awards last October, talked about what her mental health struggles have taught her in an intimate new profile for Harper's Bazaar UK.James Devaney via Getty ImagesIt wasn’t until the New Orleans native told a dear friend about her challenges that she understood it was time to seek medical help, an option she told Harper’s she knows can’t be taken for granted.“I had the connections and the means to get to a doctor, a mental-health specialist, but a lot of people don’t,” the star and executive producer of “The Morning Show” said. “They struggle on their own and hide it.”While Witherspoon’s postpartum journey reinforced how important it is to have someone safe to talk to, she also told the magazine how she felt blessed to be raised by someone who refused to approach emotions with shame.“My mom never talked about mental health in a way that made it feel untouchable, unspeakable or taboo; she was almost clinical about it,” she said of mother Betty Witherspoon, who worked as a pediatric nurse.“I don’t beat around the bush,” the “Big Little Lies” actor went on. “If something is on my mind or I’m concerned, I’m always going to be that person who pushes the edges and asks the hard questions.”Witherspoon also reminded readers how the unique ways our brains are wired can offer both challenges and strengths, telling Harper’s, “I was probably successful because I had so much anxiety. They go hand in hand.”“I had pressured myself to extreme levels to show up at work in a perfect way. We all now know — perfect is not attainable. It’s not sustainable. I stressed myself out in service of my job, and it got me really, really far.”Close